Since last March 24 Russia decided to launch its military invasion on neighboring Ukraine, Telegram has been dragged by the war. Citizens of both countries are massively using this instant messaging application to find out about the war and try to circumvent censorship, but despite its growing popularity, the platform also raises suspicions for allowing disinformation propaganda on both sides of the front and for being less secure than it seems.
In much of the world, WhatsApp is the most used platform to communicate. It is not the case of Russia and Ukraine, where Telegram has been standing out for years in big cities. The war has accentuated that use. Many Ukrainians flock to this app as a means of constant information, being able to follow the channels through which they communicate from their president, Volodymyr Zelensky, even journalists on the ground. But it is also very popular in Russia, where 63% of Russians use it as an alternative source to media controlled or linked to the Kremlin.
Neither so free nor so safe
Telegram is not immune to problems. With 500 million active users per month and just 30 employeesthe platform is sold as a space to communicate without censorship or government interference: has repeatedly refused to transfer user data to Moscow and it has continued to work even though the Kremlin tried to ban it. Even so, this communicative freedom and the limited moderation of the contents have opened the door to propaganda and misinformation. The proliferation of hoaxes about covid-19 has already highlighted a problem that is being repeated with the war.
Telegram also ensures that it is a secure app that guarantees Privacy, something essential in full war escalation. But there are certain doubts about that point, since it collects certain personal data that “could reveal & rdquor; the identity of the user, according to a 2017 report from the National Cryptologic Center. In addition, only “secret chats” are encrypted, while other conversations are stored in the cloud. “There is a significant risk of insider threat or of ‘hack‘ that could expose all those chats to the Russian government & rdquor ;, Eva Galperin, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has warned. Groups can hold up to 200,000 users.
One of the personalities who has criticized these failures the most is Moxie Marlinspike, founder of Signalconsidered the most secure messaging application in the world due to communications encryption that makes them impossible to intercept and for its minimal collection of personal data. Doubts about Telegram are leading more and more Ukrainians to switch to Signal.
Telegram is the most popular messenger in urban Ukraine. After a decade of misleading marketing and press, most ppl there believe it’s an “encrypted app”
The reality is the opposite-TG is by default a cloud database w/ a plaintext copy of every msg everyone has ever sent/recvd. https://t.co/6eRGIyXyje
— Moxie Marlinspike (@moxie) February 25, 2022
A founder persecuted by Putin
Telegram has no ties to Moscow, although it does have a turbulent past. The app was founded in 2013 by brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov, originally from St. Petersburg. The second is quite a personality in Russia. At the age of 22, he founded Vkontakte (VK), a Russian version of Facebook that quickly became the most popular social network in the country., but also from Ukraine. Dubbed by some means as the mark zuckerberg Russian for his prolific career, Durov’s fortune amounts to 14,000 million euroswhich places him among the ten richest people in Russia and number 112 in the world ranking, according to Forbes.
However, that success was cut short by his refusal to dance to the sound of Vladimir Putin. With a Western profile, Durov had created with VK a social platform with such power for freedom of expression that it could pose a threat to Moscow’s interests. A) Yes, the Kremlin pressured the app for years, demanding that it remove the publications of opposition groups or give personal data of its users to the government.
In 2014, the FSB – the Russian security agency heir to the KGB – asked Durov to help identify those who were demonstrating in Ukraine against the pro-Russian president. Viktor Yanukovychwho would end up being deposed as a result of the revolt of the maidan. The businessman’s refusal cost him his job. “I refused to comply with these demands. I lost my company and my house, but I would do it again without hesitation & rdquor ;, he explained in mid-March in a post on his Telegram channel. VK came to be controlled by businessmen close to the Russian government.
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Aware that he was an awkward person, a year before Durov created Telegram and legally registered his new company in the British Virgin Islands, far from the tentacles of the Kremlin. After his expulsion from VK, at just 30 years old, the technologist escaped from Russia and acquired citizenship of the Caribbean island of Saint Kitts and Nevis, which has allowed him to travel around the world and change his residence. He currently resides in Dubai.
Durov is a cyberlibertarian who believes in technology as a tool for liberation. That is why he has been financing the operation of Telegram out of his pocket for almost a decade. Still, he knows that his creation can also be instrumentalized for much less ethical ends. This is what is happening in Ukraine. “The channels are becoming more and more an unverified source of information & rdquor ;, he has warned her. “I ask Russian and Ukrainian users to distrust any data that is spread on Telegram at the moment & rdquor ;.